Getting rid of stuff is, of course, one of the great pleasures of a move. Just dropped off at the Used department of Harvard Book Store:

Copies of my books in lots of languages, including a few in English. They won't put everything on the shelves right away, so if you're curious if anything specific is available, ask at the desk, or email usedbooks@harvard.com.

Thanks to Steve, Emily, and Jenni for your help with my piles of books. Extra thanks to Steve for helping me lug them! Thanks also for the packing boxes :o)

In other news... I regularly play Scrabble on my phone, against the expert computer. Maybe I average one game a day (maybe more). When I first moved from playing the advanced computer to playing the expert computer (which is the highest setting), I probably got destroyed for the first ten or twelve games... but I learned from it. After that, I started to win. Now I win about half the time. But it has always been, and continues to be, a frequently ridiculous endeavor…

"Between 1812 and 1815 several large volcanoes erupted around the world including Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which was the largest volcanic eruption in a millennium. Ash accumulated in the atmosphere and changed weather patterns worldwide.

"1816 became known as the Year Without Summer. The average global temperature dropped by several degrees. Crops failed, many starved, and the normally beautiful Swiss summer was shrouded in gloom and rain. The world was prophesied to end in July."

And, what else was happening? Mary Shelley (then Mary Godwin), aged 18, was traveling through Switzerland with her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley and her step-sister Claire Clairmont... who was in pursuit of her erstwhile lover Lord Byron... who was also in Switzerland, because he'd fled England in an attempt to avoid debtors and s…

Kristin Cashore wrote the New York Times bestsellers Graceling, Fire, Bitterblue, and Jane, Unlimited. Graceling is the winner of the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature and Fire is the winner of the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award. The books are world travelers, currently scheduled to be published in thirty-four languages.

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"Then, at last, sitting on her stretcher-bed, she took from the very bottom of her pack an old peacock-blue scarf folded around a heavy, square book. She unwrapped it and opened it very carefully, as if guilty secrets might fall from between its pages like pressed flowers. This was Harry's secret. She was a writer."

-from The Tricksters, by Margaret Mahy

Writing is my secret. Every day I unwrap and open it as carefully as I can. Welcome to my blog about writing and life! Above you'll find quick links about me and my books, and below is more about me, ways to subscribe, and an archive of past posts. Click here to go home to my most recent posts.

Finally, a note: This blog is my only online presence. I am not on Facebook, Google+, or any other social media sites, and I use Twitter mainly as an amalgamation feed for my blog. Sorry, but I do not read @-replies on Twitter!